


Why Him?

by Durless



Category: El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera
Genre: F/M, Gen, Two Shot, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Durless/pseuds/Durless
Summary: Black Cuervo finds herself with a crush on another Miracle City villain.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago during my rp days. I liked it and wanted to put it on here too.  
> I think it's a cute ship.

Cuervo glanced at Chipotle.   
  
He was only mixing some chemicals together. They were trying to make some sort of cool explosive or something like that. Cuervo, admittedly, had not been paying much attention to what Chipotle had been explaining. She found herself in a slight daze instead.   
  
When did she start thinking of Chipotle like this? She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment. But he was so skilled, honestly. He could repair his cybernetic arm with so much ease – a hard thing to do with only one arm. They hadn’t talked much about it, but she could guess that he was, at least, partly responsible for its creation too. On top of that, he practiced a lot of biology based villainy, such as breathing life into various creations. She would almost call it beautiful to watch.   
  
The feeling was reminiscent to a year or two ago when she had been under that weird love spell with him placed on her by another villain. Only this feeling was stronger and more potent. It was more natural and definitely more real. Her feelings had depth and it wasn’t nearly uncontrollable like when she was under the spell’s influence. This was much different.   
  
Whenever they hung out, she found himself looking at him more and becoming less interested in the work. He was strong and loyal and very kind to her. He was intimidating to their enemies and so… powerful…   
  
Cuervo forced herself to look away from him. She closed her eyes.   
  
_ Why was this happening to her? _   
  
She didn’t want it. Not at all. A painful feeling in her gut reminded her every so often to escape while she still could. The aching feeling in her chest screamed at her to leave, unless she wanted to be hurt.   
  
The feeling also reminded her of something else, or rather someone else. Manny Rivera. The boy she had been chasing after in vain for over a year. The boy who tricked her, who used her, who never loved her.   
  
She hated him now. She could only feel deeply rooted betrayal and painful memories that came with an overwhelming amount of embarrassment when she thought of him. She had been so foolish to trust him, to throw herself at him. Why hadn’t she handled that better? Why hadn’t she had enough pride to walk away?   
  
It was happening again.   
  
Cuervo clenched her jaw. She couldn’t do this to herself again. No one was worth that amount of pain. She never wanted to go through anything like that again. No amount of physical pain even came close to it either.   
  
She had learned from that experience, she told herself. She would never repeat the same mistake, she would never even come close to it. Yet the blooming feelings for the other villain sitting next to her said otherwise.   
  
She was setting herself up for failure, disappointment, and rejection all at once. He didn’t like her like that and even if he did, nothing good would come of it. Nothing lasts forever. She would lose her one friend she had and it would be her fault. She couldn’t do herself. She couldn’t do it to him.   
  
“Cuervo?” His voice brought her out of her thoughts and she turned back around. He was looking at her now with slight curiosity. He clearly had no idea what kind of thoughts had been going through her head. “I asked for the vial with the red liquid.” Slight pause. “Are you okay?”   
  
She cleared her throat. “Yes, of course I am,” she snapped and scanned the workbench for the vial. She handed it to him.   
  
He shrugged and accepted it. “You’ve just been quiet.”   
  
She scanned the workbench for the vial and handed it to him. She took a deep breath. She was pretty sure she knew what needed to be done for both of their sakes. She needed to cut off all contact between them and smash this little crush while it was just forming.


	2. Chavez

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly a continuation of the first chapter. Black Cuervo and Dr. Chipotle Jr. find themselves quite literally and unwillingly stuck with one another.

Watching paint dry was boring, which was pretty much exactly what they were doing. The two supervillain children sat on the ground of Dr. Chipotle Jr.’s turquoise lab floor. They had just finished putting the first coat of paint on two new weapons they designed for themselves. Now, there was nothing else to do but wait.

Black Cuervo sighed tiredly and leaned back, putting her balance on her arms. She glanced at Chipotle, who was examining his fingernails, a true sign of boredom.

“Tell me something that I don’t know about you.” They might as well try to make conversation and where to begin other than revealing personal details about one another? 

“Huh?” He looked up and met her eyes. The demand had clearly caught him off guard. There were quite a lot of things she didn’t know about him, though most he didn’t feel like sharing. “I don’t know,” he responded, though he knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that. What was something he could safely reveal to her without there being a chance of her running away and hating him forever? Not much. What about his favorite food? Or his favorite hobbies? “I don’t know how to dance,” he blurted out. Where had that come from?

“You don’t know how to dance?!” she shrieked back before breaking out into a laughing fit.

Perhaps that had been the wrong secret to reveal. He glared at her and crossed his arms. “Shut up!” He glared at her and crossed his arms, immediately regretting telling her that. Why would he ever need to know how to dance? “It’s not like I have to dance on a daily basis!” 

She only laughed harder.

He pulled his knees closer to him and rested his head on them. So what if he didn’t know how to dance…? “You don’t have to laugh at me,” he muttered.

She stopped and wore an amused grin instead, still fighting back laughter. “It is just so funny to me. I had assumed most people knew how to dance.” Though the thought of Chipotle attempting any sort of movement on a dance floor was humorous. She could easily imagine him tripping and falling on his face. “Let me teach you. I won’t laugh.”

“What?” That was the last thing he expected to hear from her. A pause. “You’re lying.” That was pretty obvious to him. There was no way she would ever do something like that. Ever. The only reason why she would ever do something that that was for the sole purpose of laughing at him.

She stood up, rolled her eyes at him and leaned over to press a button on a stereo that rested on the counter among scraps of metal. An upbeat pop song about “doing the best you can” began playing. “Now, there is music so it will be harder to laugh at you.”

He didn’t understand the connection.

“Come on, there is nothing else to do while we wait for the paint on the new weapons to dry. Today has been a successful day.”

He was still hesitating.

She extended a hand towards him as an invitation and scowled. “Hurry up before I regret it, Chipotle. I know most basic dances and I would be happy to share my skill with someone as under privileged as you.”

He glanced between the outstretched glove and her face, which wore a serious expression. “I…” He shook his head and stood up accepting it. He would regret this later. The space between them closed.

She was already about two inches taller than he was, but her black heels gave her another inch on him. She wrapped his robotic arm around her and placed it on her lower back and she met his human hand with hers and entwined their fingers. Her other hand was on his shoulder.

It felt warm. It felt as if the lab temperature rose thirty degrees and her hands were leaving third degree burns on his skin and singeing holes in his coat.

“So, uh…” He wasn’t sure what to say. He was completely red and she was avoiding eye contact. She led him firmly around the lab, careful not to hit any counters or walls. There was a certain gracefulness in every step she took though. It was something he couldn’t help but admire and something that couldn’t have been formed without years of dance practice.

There wasn’t much talk besides the occasional mumbled “sorry” that left his mouth every time he stumbled over her feet or nearly lost his balance. The first few times, he winced and braced himself, afraid she would snap at him or declare him a useless cause, but when she didn’t have any response at all, he became less concerned with that and just focused harder on matching her steps.

“I…” He closed his mouth. He didn’t know what to say.

She picked up the pace, twirling him under her arm and leading the dance. They were moving faster and blunders on his part were becoming less frequent.

He felt himself relaxing and moving more freely. He could feel his body move to the music and with hers. It was actually sort of… enjoyable? He wondered if this was what he was always missing out on the years he skipped his middle school prom. Was this what all of his former classmates felt like floating across the gym floor?

He shook his head, attempting to clear the thoughts from his head. Those thoughts were silly. A wave of embarrassment rushed over him and he suddenly felt extremely self-conscious. What was he even doing? This entire thing was ridiculous. “Cuervo,” he begun, but didn’t know how to continue, so he took his hands away from her.

“What are cyo doing? Stop.” She reached for his arm and pulled him back, though a bit too hard. She had been expecting him to resist more and ended up using too much force. He fell back on top of her and her arms flung out wildly, trying to grab something for balance. However, although she didn’t recover her balance, she manage to hit something in the lab which responded with a small “ding.”

They crashed at once. He hit his head against the floor and she hit her arm on the edge of a nearby cabinet. 

The pop song ended and the radio began playing a sad, slow love song that carried through the lab.

“Urgghh…” He blinked a few times and rubbed his head. Ouch. He wasn’t entirely sure what happened, but he felt different. “…Cuervo?” That was weird. Did his voice sound different? It seemed to be a few pitches higher.

“What, Chipotle?” he answered himself. There was the voice again. This time, he could feel his mouth move to form the words even though he was sure he wasn’t the one who had chosen to speak them. He wasn’t the one talking, was he?

He froze. “Cuervo,” he repeated.

“Chipotle,” he said again. No. He wasn’t talking. He was sure of it, and yet everything was pointing towards that conclusion.

He could feel his body tense up even though he wasn’t the one doing it. Before he knew it, his legs were also moving. The first step was an ungraceful trip and he fell flat on his face.

“Ow…” He picked himself up and looked down at his hands in shock. They resembled Cuervo’s to a high degree only instead of purple claws, they were maroon. He held up his hands and they didn’t move. Instead, another set of arms appeared. These were both robotic much like his usual left arm. They seemed to be coming from his torso while the ones like Cuervo were connected further up.

“Chipotle, what did you do?” he asked himself in a low whisper against his will.

Pause. “Wait, is that you, Cuevo?” It was super weird talking to himself like this. “Where are you?” A longer pause. “Are you… me?”

The two red gloved Cuervo hands reached up to the counter and attempted to pull the body up. It was a difficult task and his – no their – body fell multiple times before they lifted themselves up. They stood on unstable feet. They were silent as they grasped the countertops desperately for support, walking over to a mirror on the wall on the far side of the room.

Their whole body was shaking.

Chipotle would have made their body scream first if Cuervo hadn’t.

Their hair was dark and messy with bright streaks of red and they had a matching face mask that stretched over one human and one robotic eye. They wore a full dark red bodysuit similar to Cuervo’s that had buttons up the front like Chipotle’s white lab coat. Their socks went up past their knees with the same striped pattern as Cuervo’s, but with their, apparently, main color. And of course, they had four arms as they had noticed before.

“CHIPOTLE!” they screeched, madly patting down their body as if they to affirm their condition. “CHIPOTLE! YOU IDIOT! WHAT DID YOU DO? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!” he yelled back. He was truly at a loss.

Controlled by primarily by Cuervo at the moment, they stumbled back from the mirror, unable to look any longer. “I’M HIDEOUS!” They whipped themselves backwards, landing on the counter behind them, knocking off the radio and the bits of scrap metal.

The radio’s batteries were knocked out and the room went quiet.

They breathed heavily. They felt dizzy.

“I don’t know what happened, Cuervo,” they spoke quietly, doing their best to sound composed. “I don’t understand.” Even though the body they occupied was the only one in the room, he could still feel her presence and could feel their heart pounding loudly. He felt larger and heavier. Had they joined together? Fused?

“What will happen? It has to be something in your lab that did this. This does not just happen from bad dancing.” They rubbed their face with their two gloved hands and looked wildly around the lab for a clue.

“We fell in the far corner of the lab over there.” The left cybernetic arm pointed to the location and the conjoined body began to make its way over only to trip. They grabbed desperately for another countertop only to pull three glass flasks on top of them, which shattered upon impact and left a nasty wound on the right human arm.

“OW!” they yelled

“CUERVO! STOP MOVING!”

They tried balancing themselves only to fall backwards again onto the floor.

“CUERVO! STOP! WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER ON THIS!”

They stopped moving and let themselves rest of the floor.

“Now, take it one step at a time. We have to walk like normal, but also cooperate.” How were they going to do this? They could hardly cooperate when they were two separate beings half of the time. “I think… we stepped on one of my prototype inventions.”

They tensed up and narrowed their human eye. “What invention?” they asked through gritted teeth. “What invention to you have that would POSSIBLY require something like this?! WHAT USE COULD THIS POSSIBLY HAVE?!”

“You put two or more organisms on the plate and press a button and eet fuses to make a bigger and more powerful being using both of the personality and physical traits. I haven’t tested it much - BUT EET SHOULD BE OKAY!”

“WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT?! THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST STUPID THINGS I HAVE EVER HEARD OF!” They grabbed their head in frustration.

“Eet could only be that machine, which was in the corner of the room of where we fell… We must have accidentally triggered it…. and this is the result.” It worked at least. “I had only tested it on small animals…” they admitted. “I’m certain eet was this machine. It was to release havoc on Miracle City using the most dangerous kind of monsters and any and all hybrids they could prod–”

Their words were cut off as they immediately began crawling on all six limbs to the corner of the room. It was much more uncomfortable, but worked slightly better.

“Wait, Cuervo!”

“HOW DO YOU REVERSE THIS? I WANT TO KNOW HOW, CHIPOTLE! HOW?! HOW?!”

Chipotle could feel the anger and frustration from their combined being. He could feel every emotion she was experiencing as his own, which made thinking complicated. “…You can’t. I haven’t built it yet.” He winced and braced himself for the worst.

“WHAT?! YOU HAVEN’T EVEN BUILT SOMETHING TO REVERSE EFFECTS?! WHAT KIND OF SCIENTIST ARE YOU?! YOU ARE AN IDIOT! THE WORST IDIOT THAT EVER LIVED! I HATE YOU!”

“IT’S A PROTOTYPE!”

*** 

They shut their eyes tightly. Their whole body shook with anger, with fear.

Cuervo had to get out of this and fast. She felt constrained with him. The body she was in wasn’t her own. It felt foreign and she only had partial control over it. It was the most unbearable thing she could imagine.

Cuervo needed to get out of this mess. This was probably one of the worst things that could have ever happened to her. She was literally stuck indefinitely with Chipotle.

“I can’t do this,” she admitted bitterly through their shared mouth. (How did eating even work?! She hoped they wouldn’t get hungry anytime soon. She almost didn’t want to know.) “I don’t want to be here. How long will it take you to build another machine to reverse this?” She had SCHOOL and an alter ego to keep up.

“…I don’t know,” they answered. “A few days at the least. It’s hard to move like this and I still need the right parts. I’m sure I can build us something to get, uh, unfuse us.”

They grit their teeth with frustration and balled their human fists, digging their red talons into their gloves. “I CAN’T WAIT THAT LONG!” they shouted. “I HAVE THINGS TO DO! I CANNOT BE LIKE THIS!”

They could feel a tugging at their human eye and a tear forming. “No! No! No! No!” they repeated, covering their eye with one of their hands. They couldn’t cry. Not in front of them. But they could feel their emotions about to be set loose. They couldn’t possibly cry. They weren’t allowed. Not now.

“…I’m sorry,” they managed to choke out and held back a sob. Their body sank to the ground as they wept silently. It was nearly impossible to tell which one of them was crying. Perhaps both. But they stopped sobbing as a sudden warm presence overtook them. They could almost feel arms around them, pulling them into a deep embrace. They were… comforting each other.

“I didn’t… mean for this to happen. I didn’t want to get stuck like this,” they began, sniffling. “I didn’t mean it.” They felt like a child, listless and weak. And they hated it. The fused being sighed and wiped their face with the back of one of their hands.

“Let’s just figure this out.” Their voice came out gentle and they found themselves feeling significantly more calm than before. “It will take time, but we can do it. But I can’t do it alone.” They felt a red flush come to their face as they admitted that. Neither being was used to being so reliant on anyone. To say it was uncomfortable would have been a gross understatement. But what choice did they have? They would both have to cooperate to get this to work. This time, there would be no running away or turning back when things got heated and tense or just plain awkward.

They shut their eyes and exhaled. “Yeah, okay,” they agreed and nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this a long time ago. Most likely won't get to finishing it, but who knows


End file.
